Idaho food and beverage

September 17, 2007

Monday morning water cooler 9.17.07

Vineyard Christian Fellowship is in the Idaho Statesman again today for its leading role in the evangelical Christian "creation care" movement. (I noticed Vineyard had a booth at the Hyde Park Street Festival last weekend, too.) The Garden City-based Vineyard will host a national environmental stewardship conference later this week.

I applaud what Vineyard is doing, but I still wonder whether and how it might be affecting congregants' voting patterns. (I wrote the following letter to the Statesman shortly after Vineyard unveiled its environmental initiative a few years ago.)

It's good to hear Vineyard Christian Fellowship is pursuing a new campaign of environmental stewardship, based on the belief that the Earth is God's creation and the Bible calls us to take care of it. But how does this position jibe with voting, as I am sure most of Vineyard's fundamentalist congregants did last fall, for George W. Bush? The current president has a truly awful record on the environment, ranging from his denial that global warming even exists to his bullheaded push to drill for a negligible amount of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If Vineyard's congregants really want to help preserve our planet, they'll urge the president to support better fuel economy standards, improved public transit funding, responsible family planning to prevent overpopulation, and an end to the environmental mayhem wrought by “shock-and-awe”-style military actions. How about it?

In today's article, Vineyard pastor Tri Robinson is quoted as saying, "If people know Jesus they'll vote right. They'll have compassion and mercy and care about the world around them."

Interesting stuff. All I can say is this: If Bryan Fischer is mad at you, you are doing something right.

P.S. from Julie ... this is going to be my last post for a while. Despite my announced "retirement," I have been making too many posts. It's time for others to Step It Up, so to speak!

Comments

Also on the environmental front, I am one of the "talking heads" (maybe shoulders, too?) on the latest installment of KBCI Channel 2's "Project Green." The half-hour show focuses on transportation alternatives.

Check it out at 7 tonight (Monday, September 17), or click my name for other air dates/times on the Boise Bus Blog.

Bonneville will be the eighth Idaho county with an Idahoans for Obama organization. The others are Ada, Bannock, Canyon, Kootenai, Latah, Nez Perce, and Twin Falls. More info at http://www.idahoansforobama.org/.

Ooops, another email news nugget. This is Drinking Liberally week in Boise, and there's a new venue: Pengilly's, 513 Main Street. The meet-up is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 19. Happy third anniversary to DL Boise!

Actually I googled real quick to look for some pics and did not find any with ease. We watched a story on it yesterday -- used to be only ice breaking ships could navigate parts of it, and now there was a LOT of water to be seen, between floating ice.

KBCI was the prime media sponsor for the Step It Up concert we held here in Boise back in April. At the time, our organizing committee met with the Director of Programming Production who informed us that their station has chosen environmental issues as a focus for their reporting and would produce a number of pieces on the topic over the next two years. It seems this "Project Green" series of reports are the result of this effort.

I encourage everyone with an interest in this issue to tune in tonight at 7 p.m. (or record for later viewing which is what I'll be doing) and watch their broadcast. They did a previous broadcast on recycling in the Treasure Valley two months ago.

Sorry, Left Side. I've fixed the blogroll. Thanks for the tip on Craig (and thanks, t, for the linkage).

Interesting move by the ACLU. I wonder how Craig feels about it? From USA Today:

"Senator Craig has not always been a great friend of civil liberties, but you shouldn’t have to endorse the civil liberties of others to keep your own," Anthony Romero, the group's executive director, says in a statement. "Government should make public restrooms safe for all, but it should do so in a manner that is really designed to stop inappropriate behavior, rather than destroying the lives of people who might have no intention of doing anything illegal."